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How to Create New Habits

WHAT IS THIS EPISODE ABOUT?

In this episode, I’m going to delve deeply into how habits are formed from a psychological standpoint. and how to be consistent with what’s most critical to our success. How we control our habits determines, to a huge degree, whether we will have the discipline needed to succeed in achieving our goals.

WHY SHOULD I LISTEN?

I’m going to use real-life examples to teach you how you can get rid of old bad habits, and replace them with new ones that will lead you in the right direction. You’ll not want to miss this one.

EPISODE LINKS:

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

00:00 Inconsistency, lack of follow through, not being able to break old habits and form new ones. Sound familiar? I used to struggle with all that too. And then I started studying how habits are formed at a psychological level, and what I found was absolutely fascinating. And so, what I found was, there’s actually triggers in our brain that when they go off, they make us do certain things. We don’t even really have control over it, but if you can rewrite those, then you can completely control your habits, and that’s what we’re going to talk about on today’s episode.

00:36 You are now entering a new paradigm. So, here’s my issue. I wanted to find the answers to life’s biggest questions. Things like, how do I become happy and live with purpose? How do I make more money doing what I love, and what does it mean to be truly successful in all areas of life? My name is Josh Forti, @JoshForti on Instagram, and I ask life’s biggest questions and share the answers with you. My goal is to help you find purpose, happiness, and open your mind to new realms of possibility by helping you think differently about everything you do, know, and understand. On this podcast, we think different, we dream bigger, and we live in a world without limits. This is a new paradigm. Welcome to The Think Different Theory.

01:17 What’s going on guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Think different Theory. My name is Josh Forti and we are on episode number…, gosh, what number? What do we have? 49 now? 50, 51. Oh my gosh. Episode 51. I just had to check real quick. I’m super excited. It is a Monday when this is dropping. So, welcome to your workweek. If you are listening in the car, or you are listening on the way to the gym, or at the gym, or wherever you’re listening, welcome to this Monday morning, or whenever you’re listening to the podcast. Welcome back to the program. Today, we actually have a fascinating episode, because it comes from listener request. In fact, a lot of listeners requested this one, both on Facebook and on Instagram. So I’m super excited to dive in. We’re gonna be talking all about consistency, and how habits are formed, and ways that you can actually break old habits, and get into new habits, stay consistent with something, and follow through to ultimately achieve your goals, your dreams, success, what have you.

02:22 And, this is actually…, this came off of when I actually decided like to do this episode off of a Facebook post that I did, because I made a post that said, “Success is literally just discipline.” Like if you lack discipline, you’re not going to have success, but if you have discipline, then you’re going to have success. In fact, the exact quote of the thing was, “Lack of success is just lack of discipline. Control your daily habits. And it’s impossible not to reach greatness.” Think different, right? And, a lot of people were like, “Do a podcast episode on this”, or “Oh, this is amazing. Like, I wish I could stay consistent. I just can’t figure out how to control my daily habits.” And, I got a couple of people that were like, “Yeah. Okay, Josh. Like, just because you control your habits doesn’t mean you’re going to achieve greatness.”

03:07 And so, I want to tell your story and also…, first off, debunk the myth that your daily habits don’t control the outcome of your life, because I think that that’s, first and foremost, it’s very important to understand that your daily habits do control the outcome of your life, and they’re going to determine whether or not you become great or not, because I want you to think about something, right? And I had this fascinating realization about a couple of months back, that really, once I like…, once I opened my eyes to this, and once I realized this, I was like, “Oh. Oh man. Okay. That actually makes a ton of sense.” I want you to think about something. Okay? Where you are at in life right now, has been formed because of the actions that you have taken in your past life. Right?

03:58 Like, I don’t mean like a life before this, but like your actions leading up to your life now have led you to this. Right? We can all agree that if we chose different actions, a year ago, five years ago, however long ago, that your life would look different now. If a year ago you decided to just get up and move across the country, as I did, that life is going to look way different than the life that you are living right now. And, what’s interesting is, that at the end of every single day, you’re either moving towards your goals or away from your goals. Because remember, when we talked, kind of talked about this before on the podcast, like your goals are moving, right? Like the world is changing and evolving. And so like, achieving your goals is kind of like a moving target, right? So if you’re not actively going towards your goals, then you are moving away from them.

04:52 There’s really no like, “Yup. Still, in the same place I was”, like you’re either closer or further away. There’s really no middle ground, right? Like for the sake of the argument, like to a certain extent, right? So, think about this. If every single day, at the end of every day. Let’s just say this was a point system. Right? And you needed 1 million points to achieve all of your goals and dreams. And, each day you were capable of achieving 100 points. Okay? At the end of each day, you can look back, and look at how many points you racked up, and you can go, “Did the actions that I took today, every single one of them, lead up to a hundred points?” And a hundred points would be a full 100% day, completely dedicated. Every single action you took that day was dedicated towards getting closer to your goals. Alright? So that would be a completely full hundred point day.

05:53 Most of us, on an average day probably only do maybe like 10 to 20 points, if that towards our goals and dreams. Especially if you’ve got a job, if you’ve got kids, if you’ve got other responsibilities, you’ve really only got…, you know, time to do like 10 to 20 points. Even on a good day, maybe 30 or 40, right? You’re really productive that day. But a full 100 point day would move you a hundred points closer, or whatever that would be, what one 1000th of 1000 yeah. One 1000th of the way, or one 10000th actually. Oh yeah. That’s what…, one 10…, I’m not good at math. One 10000th of the way towards your goal. Right? Of a million, and that’s what it is, over the course of your lifetime. Right? And that would be the ultimate achievement of your goals. Billion dollars, fame, whatever you want it to have it. Right?

06:46 So, what you have to realize is that if you choose to watch Netflix instead of work on your goals, there might not be anything inherently wrong with that, but it does mean that that action is holding you back from getting to your goal. Not because Netflix necessarily is holding you back, but because lack of action towards your goal means…., lack of momentum forward means that you’re going the opposite direction, because you can’t really stay still in your goals. Right? And so, every single day we have these habits, and our habits essentially dictate our future. I want you to think about something. If you could program your mind, and you can have the habits that every single day, you achieve a perfect 100. Alright? You achieve a perfect 100 every single day. And let’s say, that a million points, right?, is your ultimate goals.

07:45 Well, let’s say like, a thousand points, or let’s…, let’s be a little bit of…, let’s say 10,000 points. Alright? Is like 1 million bucks, and what most would consider financially free, or financially independent like you could quit your job, you’ve got savings lived up, you get kind of get to live like a dream life. You’re not filthy rich, but you’re financially set. Right? Well, guess what? How long is it going to take for someone that only works 10 to 20 points a day on their goals versus somebody that’s working a hundred points a day, full steam ahead towards their goals? Right? So to reach 10,000 points, they would have to go and do it at a hundred days. A hundred times a hundred is 10,000. Right? So, in a hundred days someone could achieve financial freedom, let’s just say. Alright? Which more or less is possible. I mean for the sake of the argument. Well, it would take somebody else to achieve that same amount of money or that same amount of success that only does 20 points a day, it would take them 500 days to achieve that.

08:51 And, because of the laws of the universe, which we’re not going to get into, there is a gravity…, I mean an exponential compound effect of those people that are achieving that a hundred points. So that a hundred points, is now like 10 times more powerful, because they’re 10 times further ahead, and they have 10 times more information, and they’ve got momentum in that direction. So one point is not really equal to the one point that the lower person is doing. So you see, that every single day, our habits on a day to day basis, whether that’s drinking water or versus soda, or watching Netflix versus watching an educational course, or you know, playing with your kids versus, you know, building funnels, which once again, none of those things are bad. I’m not saying that playing with your kids or spending time with your spouse, or like whatever that is is a bad thing.

09:36 I’m just saying that it takes time away from your goals unless that is ultimately your goal. And then obviously you’re moving forward to that, but your decisions on a day to day basis will affect the outcome of your life. So, now the question becomes, “How do you actually go and change your habits?” Because this was something that I struggled with for a long time. And I still struggle with this to this day, but I’ve gotten so, so much better at it because I was the dude that would go and would…, guys, I remember when I first moved into my apartment, you’ll get a huge crack out of this. Right? Or you’ll laugh about it. Like maybe like three or four months in, I had gotten settled in, and I wasn’t getting a whole lot done. And so I was like, “You know what? I need to get organized, right?”

10:18 You ever use that excuse before, right? “I need to get organized. I just need to get things in place. I just need that clarity. I just need that cleanliness.” So I went and I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom. Right? It didn’t really even need cleaning but I did. Clean all day. And then I was like, “You know what? I would work better if my office was in the other room.” And so I changed around my entire apartment layout, and I put all this stuff in this other room. And, then I went out and I threw away a bunch of like, like my old desk or whatever, and got a new pool table, and I bought a new desk chair, and I moved everything around, and I set up the camera, and I got this green screen. Like, I like all this really cool stuff.

10:48 Right? And guess what? And nothing got done. I still didn’t break my habits of being lazy. I still was getting out of bed late. I still couldn’t follow through on what it was that I was trying to do. I still had the exact same habits that I had before, and I still wasn’t moving forward to my goal. I was still only living that maybe…, that 10 to 20 point day, and I was never able to achieve that hundred point day. Right? And in my head, like, so someone that I look up to, and you guys know like it’s Sam Ovens. Right? I love Sam Ovens. Or I love…, I love learning from him. And so to me, like, Sam Ovens in his average day would be like a hundred day for me. Right? Like completely focused from sunup to sundown, an entire week of complete focus and all that. Just getting all that done.

11:33 I was like, “Man, if I could ever hit the perfect hundred days, I’m sure that’s what Sam Oven’s day looks like on a daily basis. Right?” Now obviously there’s more severity there, but you get what I’m saying. And so, I would try all these things, and I would be like, “Well, if I bought different lettuce.” Right? Or I’d go to the store, and I’m like, “Well, I need better food.” And so I would go to the store and I would get better food. Or, “I really need to shower first”, like the stupidest things. And I would try to like set my alarm 30 minutes earlier thinking that if I set my alarm 30 minutes earlier, that would give me time to sleep in in that 30 minutes. And then I’d get out of bed on time. And like just random stuff that didn’t actually work. None of it worked, none of it.

12:07 And so, I decided to actually study what happens when habits are formed. Like, how is it that habits are formed? And what I’ve found, fascinated me. So I’ve read several different books on habits, and how habits are formed, and some…, one of them was like, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, but the one that fascinated me most, and I really recommend you read, is the power of habit. Alright? And, it talks about, how habits are formed, and it talks about how your habit is…, are actually different than your memory. So what I used to think, and I think a lot of people do as well, is that like, if I want to change my habits, I want to remember to do something different. Right? Well, they did these tests in this book on people that were like, kind of brain dead, or not like brain dead, because they were still like conscious and able to walk around, but they had no memory.

12:55 Alright? So they had lost all their memory, they couldn’t remember things, they didn’t remember who people were, or whatever, but they realized that when certain things would happen, these people would do things, like come out of habit, literally out of habit and just do them without ever, ever having any memory of doing them. So for example, this one guy was completely brain dead. They’re completely memory dead. He didn’t know who anybody was. He didn’t know what his house was, he didn’t know what his name was, or any of those things, but every single time, at a certain time of the day, when a certain thing would happen, he would stand up, he would walk out of the house, he would walk around the block, and he would come back into his house, and he would sit down and he would keep watching TV. Okay? And so, they watched him do this over and over and over again.

13:35 And so, one time they like stopped him outside of his house, and they’re like, “Hey, which house is yours?” And he couldn’t for the life of him, know which house was his. But when they just let them go back into his habit, he walked out of the same door, walked around the block the same time, and went back into the house. So, they started studying that and I found this fascinating. And what they realized, when like, looking at the brain, is that habits are actually formed by triggers. Okay? So, when a trigger happens in your life, you go and do a certain habit. And so, if you ever watched “The Office”, right?, you’ve probably seen the episode (The Office, the TV show) where Jim and Dwight, they sit across from each other at the desk. Every single time that Jim, his computer would ding, it’d be like triiiing, he would give Dwight a mint. And so he’d be like, “Want a breath mint?” And he did it over and over and over again.

14:26 And then so then one time, he just clicked the ding and Dwight just held out his hand for the mint without Jim ever asking him if you wanted a mint or not, like a breath mint. And, his like, mouth started salivating, because he like craved the mint, because his brain was programmed like, “Hey, trigger happened. I heard this ding, and I hold out my hand to get the mint. I put them in my mouth, my mouth waters, and…”, you know, life goes on. Right? And so, those are the ways that our habits are formed. And so, from the time you get out of bed, to the time you go to bed at night, there are so many things that we are programmed to do subconsciously, without even thinking about it, based on triggers. So, trigger happens, you do thing. Someone says a certain word, you go do something, the clock strikes a certain time, you go do something.

15:16 Sometimes the trigger is, it turns three o’clock. Right? And it’s like the same time every day you just go do something. And you trained your mind to do these things, whether that’s smoking a cigarette. Right? Maybe…, you know, 15 minutes goes by since you smoked your last cigarette, somebody opened up a peanut M&M in his bag. Boom! I crave a cigarette. I go out, light up a cigarette, go. You know, whatever that thing is, these habits are formed, because of the triggers that happened in our lives. So if we want to change our habits, we simply need to identify the triggers, and we need to replace our bad habit with a different habit when that trigger happens. So, most people think that in order to break a bad habit, you just have to stop doing the bad habit that you’re doing. And that’s almost impossible to do, because your brain is literally programmed to go and do the habit.

16:10 And so, when a trigger happens, it has to go do something. So, here’s an interesting kind of like a little backstory, or some context around habits. Bad habits usually happen out of stress and boredom. Alright? Almost all bad habits come from one of those two things. Alright? So, people that like work a lot, or people that are super, super stressed all the time. That’s why they pick up like smoking, or why they pick up drugs, or why they pick up, whatever. Right? And why they start doing these things that are less than like, less than admirable, or less than wanted. They do them out of stress, or on the flip side, because they’re bored. They have nothing else to do, they have no purpose. And they just sit around and they’re like, “Well, I’ve got to do something.” So they naturally do the thing that they shouldn’t be doing, because that’s human nature. Right?

16:55 So, once we understand that most of our bad habits come from either stress or boredom, now we…, all we have to do is identify, “Okay, what is the trigger that caused my bad habit to happen? Like, what caused me to want to have that desire to go do that thing?” And instead of going and doing that thing, you replace it with something else. Alright? So it’s very important to remember, you don’t eliminate a bad habit. You replace it. Alright? Because you have to fill that time with something regardless. So, instead of just trying to get out of a bad habit, you need to replace it with something that you…, that will replace that, that you want to be doing instead. Does that make sense? So, what you need to do, is first start by eliminating triggers. Alright? You’ve got to cut out as many of those as possible.

17:49 Now, you might be like, “Okay, Josh. Well, how do I identify and eliminate triggers?” I’m glad you asked. So, if you remember back in one of the very first episodes of the podcast, I know it was a while ago, cause we’ve done like 50 something in these episodes because it’s awesome. But we talked about the question of why. I think it was like the second or third episode. It was about the question of why, where I went and I talked about simply asking yourself why you do everything that you do in life? Why do you wake up when you wake up? Why do you go to bed when you go to bed? Yada, Yada, Yadda, Et Cetera. Right? So, when you do that, you start to become very aware of the things around you, and your actions on a day to day basis. So, what did I do? When I wanted to change a bad habit, I simply asked the question of why I was doing the thing that I was doing.

18:35 And by bringing awareness to what I was doing, and why I was choosing those decisions, I realized what was happening directly before the thing that I was doing. Alright? So, for example, the very first thing that I would do in the morning is the alarm would go off. I would get out of bed, I would walk to the couch, and I would sit down on the couch. So, what was the trigger? Alarm going off, and me waking up. Okay? Trigger; alarm goes off, me wake up, I immediately go sit on the couch. That’s the result. That’s the habit. So, I’ve identified what the trigger is, alarm going off and me waking up. Now, instead of going to the couch, I simply need to replace that with something else. I need to do one thing before that ultimately goes and happens.

19:22 So, what did I do instead? When the alarm goes off I get out of bed, I now, walk to the kitchen, fill up my Nalgene or my water bottle for the day with water, and I drink 20 ounces of water. Alright? Boom! So now, I’ve reprogrammed that trigger to mean something else, and simply by replacing that old habit, now I’ve gone, and I’ve started this direction in…, like a new path down the road. Okay? So you’ve got to go through each one of your habits, and go, “What is the trigger?” And it can be a very small trigger. Right? It could be…, as much as like, “Oh, my boyfriend, or my girlfriend, or my husband, or my wife, got home or whatever. And, when they get home, I immediately go, and turn on Netflix, and…, you know, grab a beer.” Right?

20:14 Because that’s what they like when they get home. Well, instead of that, when the boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, whatever that is, gets home, I go and instead…, instead of going and getting a beer, and turning on Netflix, I go and… I don’t know, take a shower. Or I go and I pour myself a glass of water, and then I go and together we go, and go for a run, or something like that. Right? Like, you’ve got to reprogram those things. And so a lot of people are like, “Is it really that simple, Josh? Like, simply by doing that?” Well, it is, but there’s kind of a catch to it. See what happens is, when most people try to go and change their habits, they go and they try to change all of their trigger points, and all of their habits at once. And that’s impossible.

20:58 Like, you have to have incredible willpower, and like basically, I don’t even know if it’s possible for anyone. I’m sure it is, but like, it’s so, so ridiculously hard, to try to change all of your habits together, but just like we talked about with the 80/20 rule, and the ripple effect, and exponential growth, and exponential results in something, when you consistently do something, that is the same thing that happens when you fix one habit. So first, you fix one habit, and all the sudden you believe in your ability to now fix a habit. Don’t try to change all of them. Pick one. And I recommend picking the bad habit that you don’t like first at the beginning of the day. So if you’re like, “Man, I cannot seem to get out of bed in the morning, and you know when the alarm goes off.” Or, “I cannot seem to…, you know, stay off the couch”, or whatever that thing is, pick that first habit and just try to master that one.

21:54 Forget about all the rest of your bad habits throughout the day. Just start with doing that one thing, and going, “You know what. Boom! I’m going to do this one thing”, because here’s what happens, we as humans go, and when we feel overwhelmed, and when we feel like it’s not possible, or that our efforts are not making a difference, we tend to shut down. And if we shut down, we can’t possibly continue improving. So, instead of trying and going and doing tons of things at once, pick one thing, win at that one new habit, and let’s say you get the first day good, and the second day good, and the third day good. And then you fail. Okay? Don’t quit and don’t beat yourself up for failing, but instead, go and be like, “You know what? I didn’t do it today, but I’m going to get it tomorrow”, or stop yourself in the middle of failing and go, “What can I do right now to make up for that failure?”

22:50 So, if you know, on the third day of me changing my habit, I didn’t go to the refrigerator, and instead I laid on the couch, 20 minutes go by, and I go, “Oh my gosh man. Men, I’m on the couch again. I failed.” Instead of looking at it as a failure, use the word but, or you know, like, but I failed today, but I can make a difference right now. Right? I didn’t get my goal right, now I’ve done the first time, but I can change right now, and then get up. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Go to the fridge, fill up that glass with water, and drink that water. Okay? Just because you fail doesn’t mean that you’re going to like always fail. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have the ability to go, and change that. And so, cutting out negative thoughts, cutting out like failure thoughts and cutting out this…, this perfect mindset of like, “Oh my gosh, I have to have it perfect every single time.”

23:43 Or, “If I mess up one time, I’m a failure.” Like we all mess up sometimes. We all don’t follow through on our habits sometimes. Alright” But, if you start winning with that small habit, little by little, you’re going to be like, “Oh. Well, guess what? Now I wake up and I drink a glass of water instead of going to the couch. Now, when I get home from work, I don’t go sit on the couch and turn on Netflix and grab a beer. Now when I get home from work, I change into running clothes, go for a five-minute walk, and come back and take a shower. You don’t have to replace your bad habits with something like crazy huge. A lot of people are like, “Well, Josh, like, you know, I have this bad habit of coming home from work and sitting down in the couch turning on Netflix. There’s no way that I’m going to be able to run two miles every day after work.”

24:34 And I’m like, well then don’t start with walking around the block. And if that’s all it takes, if that’s what you have to do, and that’s where you have to start. Great. So, put on walking shoes, put on comfortable clothes, walk outside, go for a 10-minute walk. Why? Because you’re replacing the trigger, and by replacing the trigger you form a new habit. And even if that habit isn’t like the most dreamed perfect habit in the…, you know, that you…, you would want in life, what have you done? You’ve moved closer towards your goal and now all the sudden, guess what? After changing your first habit, and then a week or two go by and you change your second habit, and another week or two go by, and then your third habit changes, and then your fourth habit change, and then your fifth habit changes, and three months go by, and now, you’re starting point, is a much much healthier place to go out and achieve your goals than it was five months ago, or three months ago.

25:28 Why? Because you didn’t try to take on everything all at once. And now, that goal that used to seem completely out of reach is a little bit more realistic and a little bit more within reach. And now, you feel like, “Oh, I can actually go and…, you know, do this.” Now, there’s a final piece to this, which I think is very important that we touch on. And before I get into this, I want to say I have read some articles that are like, don’t do this or this isn’t really how it works. So I mean there is I guess an argument out there that says no, but according to the power of habit, and according to a lot of what I’ve studied, and according to how I’ve applied this in my own life, this last piece is very important, and it helps well or it helps a lot.

26:12 So, one of the big struggles for a lot of people is, they don’t want to completely give up an old habit. It’s more like they want to…, they want to create a new one, or are they want to implement things in their life? What do I mean by this? So, for example, let’s say that you like to play Xbox, and you are like, “Well, it’s not that I never ever want to play Xbox again. It’s just that I want to start working out. Right? Like that’s… like that’s the thing that you want to do. That’s the new habit. So you find a trigger and you find that trigger is, I dunno, when the…, you finish eating dinner, you throw your plate on the counter, and you go turn on the TV and the Xbox, and you start playing Xbox, right?

26:54 And you’re like, I really want to start working out. And maybe this is a poor scenario, because right after dinner, but you get… you get the point. Right? So like, you go, you finish dinner, now it’s time to go work out, but you sit down, and start playing Xbox every time. Well, we’ve identified what the trigger is. The trigger is finishing day or putting that plate up there. So we want to replace playing Xbox with going and working out. So, we replace playing Xbox with going and working out. Now it’s time to give ourselves a reward. And I really liked the reward based system. As long as you’re not going over the top with rewards.

27:29 Like, “Oh, I made my bed, now let me go play Xbox for 12 hours.” Right? Like, that can’t be the reward, but a moderate role award is…, In my opinion, totally fine, and it’s how you are…, your subconscious and your brain actually works to form habits. So it’s like, it goes and your brain goes, “Hey look, trigger, action, reward.” Okay? Trigger-Action-Reward, Trigger-Action-Reward, Trigger-Action-Reward. So, you’ve got this, where it’s like, “Hmm…, I’m going back to…”, for example, the cigarette example. “Oh. Urgh…, so and so opened a bag of peanut M&Ms, that’s my trigger. Smoke a cigarette. That’s my action. Reward, feeling the…”, you know, the nicotine rush into your head, or you know, finish dinner – trigger, action – play a video game, reward – the feeling that you get from playing video games. Right? That feeling or that result, you know, that rush of enthusiasm that you get to have, right?

28:27 So that’s that feeling. So, there’s a reward that’s associated with whatever it is that you’re doing, and whatever action it is that you’re taking. So you need to now create a positive reward that you can reward yourself, after you’ve gone, and you’ve created a new habit. So, you go and let’s say, once again, we’re going to go back to the waking up example. I should’ve just stayed consistent with the examples, but you’ll live and learn. You’re struggling to get off the couch in the morning. You wake up, you go to the couch. Trigger – alarm going off, waking up. Action – going to the couch. Reward – feeling lazy, and slouching, and sitting there, and doing nothing. It feels good. Right? So, we replace the habit, trigger stays the same. Get out of bed…, or alarm goes off, you get out of bed. Action – drink a glass of water, and I don’t know, take your morning vitamins, whatever that action is.

29:22 Now, reward yourself with something small. Whether that’s…, I don’t know, you put $5 towards…, or a dollar towards…., your vacation fund, or $5 towards your vacation fund, or you got to go…, you know, take a shower or you get to…, I dont know, listen to your favorite music that morning, or you get to go and wear your favorite shoes that day. Some form of reward that you only get, and you only get it if you follow through with your action, and you do not get it, if you stay in your negative habit. So, you wake up in the morning, you go, you slip out of your new habit back into your old habit, and you sit on the couch. You don’t get your reward of being able to wear your favorite shoes, or driving the nicer car that day, or putting money aside, or listening to music on the way to work, or whatever that is.

30:10 But if you do wake up, and go right to the fridge, get a glass of water, take your morning vitamins, and take it down. Then, you get to do whatever that reward is, that you’ve set it up. It’s this rewards-based system, and that’s how your brain goes and runs habits. It is trigger, do said action, reward. That system of trigger, do said action, reward, is the same thing for both good habits and bad habits, and that should be a good thing for you, because if you’ve got bad habits right now, or if you want to create new habits, all you have to understand, is that it’s literally just that. Trigger-Action-Reward, Trigger-Action-Reward, Trigger-Action-Reward. So, find a trigger, figure out the action that you need to take when that trigger happens, give yourself said reward. And it doesn’t have to be a crazy huge reward.

31:07 Like I said, it could be something as simple as, “Oh. Tonight you get to drink a glass of chocolate milk. Right? Or…, you know, that’s for me cause I love chocolate milk. Or, you know, you get to get Starbucks on the way to work. That might be a perfect one. Right? It’s like, “Hey, if you work out in the mornings, you wake up, you work out, you get Starbucks on the way to work. You wake up, you don’t work out, you don’t get that Starbucks.” It becomes a habit. Now, if you’re trying to cut sugar out of your diet, nothing that I can do for you there. Sorry, like, can’t Starbucks in the morning, pick something else, but you get the idea. So, you need to go, and you do that habit. So, for me, one of the things that I recently broke into, or got in the habit of doing, which was a long battle for me, was taking my daily vitamins.

31:46 And so, for the longest time I have struggled just to be consistent, and taking my daily vitamin, my probiotic, my fish oil, my vitamin D, like I take all that stuff. Right? And I want to be consistent with it, and I had the hardest time, hardest time, hardest time. So what did I do? I found the trigger. Trigger; every night I used to keep tons of Reese’s peanut butter cups in the freezer, because they’re amazing, and I would get a craving for that. I’d go out there, I’d eat three or four Reese’s peanut butter cups, and then I would come back in and keep working. Now instead, around the eight or nine o’clock at night, when I crave that Reese’s peanut butter cup, instead of going to Reese’s peanut butter cups, what do I do? I go to the fridge. I mean, I’m sorry, I go to my medicine cabinet, I open up my medicine cabinet, and I grab my…, I have like a little container in there where it’s like broken out into days, and the pills I need to take each day.

32:32 Take those. Right? Then what’s my reward? Well, for me, I don’t check Instagram a lot throughout the day. I don’t have very many, or like I don’t follow very many people, but on my personal account, I have my own little private account where I like follow my friends, and like, you know, some of my favorite YouTubers, Instagrammers, et cetera. Well, my reward is, hey, I get to go and for the next 15 minutes or so, I get to get caught up on their lives or whatever it is for the day, right after that. So, trigger – I crave Reese’s peanut butter cups. Alright? Or that…, you know, that time of the night comes around when I go…, usually go out to the kitchen. Go to the kitchen, take my vitamins, go get to be on Instagram for 15 minutes and actually go…, and you know, catch up on all my friends and celebrity lives that have people that I follow. Right?

33:13 Reward…, I’m sorry. Trigger-Action-Reward, Trigger-Action-Reward. And it’s just those little steps, day by day by day, where you go out, and you make little progress. Don’t beat yourself up if you fail, because failure is only a failure if you stop trying. So, don’t beat yourself up if you fail, but instead of that, simply don’t reward yourself, don’t give yourself the reward for doing something, if you actually didn’t do it. That’s absolutely crucial. Also, understanding if you fail just one time, you…, it doesn’t mean like you failed. Like just…, do it again the next day, or do it again the next time, or stop what you’re doing right then, and go follow through. The other thing that’s really helpful, and that I have found, is…., you know, creating little schedules, and you know, kind of like, going through and checking off and going, “Okay, listen. These are like the five habits that I want to break over the next month, or the next three months, or whatever that is.”

34:14 And going like, “Okay, for the next week, I am focused on this particular habit.” And every single day, you’re just focused on that. And then once you’ve broken that habit, or you’re to a point where you’re consistently seeing progress, check it off. Boom! Done with that one. Move to the next one now. Now you’ve got two, now you’ve got three. And making that little schedule is…, you know, or I guess not really a schedule. It’d be like a checklist, or a list that you can like kind of…, follow through on. That like, really, really helps. And remember, when you’re trying to break your habits, you’ve got to set realistic goals. Alright? Like, don’t try to be…, and this goes back to the whole like, you know, trying to not do 10 things at once. The other trap that can be fallen into, is you try to set way too big of a new habit.

35:00 Like, for example, don’t be like, “Alright. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to run 15 miles a day. That’s my new habit.” Well, that’s just stupid. That’s not going to happen. You know what I mean? Like you just can’t magically just snap into gear and run 15 miles a day, and then it takes a long time. So, set realistic goals, set realistic expectations, understand the pattern of Trigger-Action-Result, Trigger-Action-Result, Trigger-Action-Result. Keep following that pattern through, until you see a new habit formed, or an old habit, or eliminated, or in that case, both. And then, go out and start crafting habits that are going to lead you to your goals, and how you identify these, you ask yourself the of why. How do you figure out what goals, and what habits that you need to form in your life by doing what we’ve talked about on this podcast before, which is figuring out what it is that you actually want out of life.

35:49 Figure it is what you’re going…, what it is that your goals actually are. Reverse engineer success back to where you’re currently are at now. It’s not difficult like success is not complicated. It’s just a matter of being consistent, and moving consistently in the right direction, over and over and over again, but you can’t possibly know what the right direction is, unless you’ve taken the time to identify your goals, which if you don’t know what I’m talking about there, go back and listen to previous podcast episodes where we talked about getting super clear on that, figuring out what it is that you want in life, how like…, reverse engineer and how you’re going to get there. Then the daily habits are the daily things that you need to do, work on and learn, in order to get there, and then take those things, and make daily habits out of them. And then replace bad habits, and once again, a “bad habit” is not necessarily bad.

36:41 Like, watching Netflix isn’t a bad thing, but it could be a bad habit. Right? Replace bad habits with good habits that will ultimately get you to the success that you want to, and then give yourself a small reward every time you follow through with that, and then the bigger the habit change you get, the bigger the rewards will become and the smaller trivial rewards will eventually just fade away, simply because your reward is no longer going to be, “Oh, you’re sitting on Netflix…, I’m sitting on Instagram for 15 minutes.” It’s just going to be the good feeling that, “Oh my gosh, I actually had my habit in place.” And some people, that’s enough, the reward is enough, and that’s why it can be somewhat controversial. Sometimes people are like, don’t…, you know, you don’t need to have like a reward.

37:23 The reward itself is enough of like being able to accomplish something. Some people can do off of that. Some people actually need rewards. Physical rewards that they give themselves when they follow through with something. So do what works for you there, but test with this. Alright? Okay. This is the longest podcast episode I’ve ever done. We’re coming up on like what, 40 minutes, 38 minutes? Something like that, of recording, which was awesome. A couple of people said that they wanted some longer episodes, so we’re going to try out a couple of longer episodes here. Do me a huge favor. Alright? I know some people hate DMing me on Instagram, and Yada, Yada, or they don’t on Instagram? Just take the time right now. Pull out your phone, send me a DM and be like, “Josh, this episode was super helpful. I liked the longer episode, or I didn’t like the longer episode.” Right? Just let me know whether or not you liked it.

38:05 If you want to see more of these, less of these, try to get your Monday morning rocking out here, and hopefully set yourself on a path for a really good week. Hopefully, you can sit down today, and be like, “Alright. This is what we’re doing. This is what I’m going to do. These are the habits that I’m going to adjust and change, and get into the flow of things.” Alright? Alright. Let’s recap really, really quick, and then we’ll end the episode. First, you have to understand that a habit is formed from a trigger. It is Trigger-Action-Reward. Every habit that you have right now is off of that principle. Alright? You’ve got to identify the trigger, identify the habit, and identify the reward, and then replace the habit and replace the reward with the new habit, and the new reward that you actually want in your life.

38:56 How do you identify triggers? Ask yourself the question of why. If you don’t know how to do that, go back and listen to the episode, it was like the second or third episode that we ever dropped. Next. In order to figure out what habits that you want to form or that you need to form, you need to ask yourself what you actually want out of life, and you need to go design your dream life. It’s so important. If you don’t know how to do that, you need to go back and listen to the podcast episode where we talked about that. See how all these episodes kind of run together. These are actually thought through. Right? And there’s a purpose behind each one of these things. Next. If you fail on your habit, don’t beat yourself up. Eliminate negativity. Don’t act like it’s a failure. Simply, don’t reward yourself with whatever award that you get from doing that new habit, and that’s why that reward is important, like having that reward there. And, if you’ve recognized that you failed, immediately, if you can, stop and go follow through on the habit that you should be doing instead of the habit that you’re currently doing now. And, always come right back at it the next day.

40:01 Just because you failed once, does not mean that you have failed forever and that you cannot do this. Be consistent with what you’re doing, and create those new triggers, create those new habits, and create those new rewards. Set Realistic goals. Right? Focus on one habit at a time. Don’t try to do 10 habits or five habits at the beginning. Stick with one. One habit at a time. Get it down. Get your confidence in that you could actually do this, and then go out and do more. If it helps, get someone to be an accountability partner. Okay? Get someone there to check in at the end of the week, so that you can let them know how it’s going. And, if it really, really helps, go and create some pain, or some consequence that you have to do at the end of the week, if you don’t hit your goals. Like say, “Listen, if I don’t wake up on time and drink a glass of water, four out of five days this week, guess what? I need to donate $100 to a charity I don’t like,” or something like that.

41:00 Right? Something to where it’s going to drive you to continue forward. Alright? Alright guys, that’s all I got for you on this episode. There was a lot of information here. I hope it helps. Like I said, this was the longest podcast episode we have ever done, but I think it was really, really important, and I really think that this can change some lives. So, if you have any questions, you know what to do. Hit me up on Instagram @JoshForti. Love to hear from you. I love to hear fan feedback and subscriber feedback. If you’re not subscribed, smash that subscribe button. Seriously like, join the movement guys. Think Different Theory. We are taking over. And remember, all of this, all these podcast episodes, these habits, what are we doing?

41:36 We’re thinking different. Right? It’s the little things. Thinking different about habits, thinking different about life, thinking different about success. We’re at a new paradigm here, guys. We’re in a place where your dreams aren’t dead. This podcast is a place where your goals, your dreams, your ambitions, and everything that you want is possible. And, I’m here to help give you the answers on how to do that. And that’s what it’s all about. I’m very, very excited about that, and we just continue to build the momentum here with this podcast. We’ve got a lot of big things coming. We’ve got Taylor Welch actually, coming up on the podcast soon, who is one of the co-founders of Traffic and Funnels. We actually have the author of one of my favorite books, “Never Split the Difference”, Chris Voss. We’re trying to line up an interview with him, and get him on the podcast.

42:19 And, we’re starting to incorporate a little bit more interviews from some really, really high-level people, not just random people, but actual high-level people, and people that can really make an impact on your life. And the…, the whole goal of the podcast is me going through life, asking questions and sharing those answers with you, and asking questions for myself. These are things that I’ve struggled with. The things that I am going through, the things that I’m figuring out. And, when you understand that and I can share those things with you, and you understand that like, I’m not teaching you things that I haven’t done myself, all of a sudden it becomes very real. I will never laugh at your goals. I’ll never laugh at your dreams, and understand that when you’re listening to this podcast, and when you’re here, your dreams are very much alive, and anything is possible.

43:03 Why? Because I believe in you because you are a human being, and God did not create us to sit around, and collect a paycheck, and die. God created us for more. He created us to go out there, and make a difference in the world. To go have an impact and to go create incredible things, bigger and better than you ever thought possible. Alright? As always, hustle, hustle, God bless. Do not be afraid to think different, because those of us that think different are the ones that are going to change the world. Do something good for someone today. Collectively we can make the world a better place that way. I love you all and I will see you on the next podcast episode. Take it easy fam.

43:41 Yo, what’s up guys? You’ve been listening to The Think Different Theory with myself, Josh Forti, which I like to call, “A new paradigm of thinking”, and real quick, I got a question for you. Did you like this episode? If you did, I want to ask a huge favor. See, the biggest thing that helps this podcast grow, and that will spread this message of positivity and making the world a better place, is if you leave a review, a rating and subscribe to the podcast. What that does is, it basically tells the platforms that this is out on, that you like my stuff, and that I’m doing something right. So if you could take like three seconds out of your day and subscribe, leave a rating, and a review, I would be forever grateful for you. Also, I want to hear from you. I want to know your feedback, your ideas, and your questions for future episodes. So be sure to hit me up on Instagram in the DM @JoshForti or via email contact@ThinkDifferentTheory.com.